I am working in my first full-time position as an engineer at small tech firm. we have only a small amount of people in the office, including several engineers and an office manager with a background in business and marketing. We are currently in e-mail communication with several manufacturers and companies who are reviewing our designs and discussing them from a technical standpoint. Our office manager has sole correspondence with these engineers. He forwards us these technical emails (when relevant) and requests a response. Once a response is received from me or the other engineers, it is edited (sometimes) and copied into his own correspondence with the companies, inserted with something like "...from our engineers: [insert what I wrote here]"
While I see the need to CC managers or have them proof read correspondence in most cases, it feels awkward not having the ability to correspond directly with companies and their engineers on technical matters directly related to my work. My emails (and/or the emails of other engineers) are sent under the generic guise of "our engineers" and modified at will. Is this standard practice for most businesses? Should I discuss this with my manager?